


The Little Landling

by XiuChen4Ever



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, mersmut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XiuChen4Ever/pseuds/XiuChen4Ever
Summary: Xiumin’s always hated the violent, greedy beings that occupy the land and litter the sea with their vessels and debris.  But something about this one catches his attention and then, more dangerously, his heart.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin
Comments: 33
Kudos: 118
Collections: ExOnce Upon A Time: Round III





	The Little Landling

**Author's Note:**

> Self-prompt, inspired by MerMay.
> 
> I wrote this before this fest even started, then sat on it until I could post it where it deserved to be. Thanks to the mods for opening the collection early just for over-excited me!

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

No matter how many times Xiumin hears the undulating deathcall of the sirens ring out over the waves, it always sends shivers down his spine. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s hearing sound travel through air rather than water or maybe because he knows how it affects the landling listeners, but every time he and the other wreckers take a vessel, it feels like the first time.

In reality, Xiumin must have done this hundreds of times, so he knows the routine well by now. Let the sirens divert the tresspassers to the wrecking bar, a sharp, barely submerged ridge of rock that the lured vessels break upon. Then join the rest of the wrecking crew in rounding up any stray landlings that escape the sinking vessel to make for the nearby islands, ensuring they drown with their fellows. They’re merciless in this, just as the landlings are merciless to the denizens of the deep, taking more than they need, destroying habitats, dumping their refuse for sea creatures to get tangled in or choke on.

This time is no different, and Xiumin dispatches six struggling landlings before he hears the panicked thrashing and cries coming from the descending vessel. He hurries to reach it, long indigo tail pumping rapidly to propel him toward the trapped land creatures. Sometimes the landlings enclose other creatures within their vessels, and the wreckers try not to take more life than necessary to keep their section of the sea safe from landling corruption.

So it’s with great relief that Xiumin releases the big, hard-tentacled creatures from the belly of the vessel, their long, hairy tails streaming behind them as they scramble for the surface. Other members of the crew will see them and guide them toward the islands, letting them join their various fellows of different shapes and sizes that the wreckers have liberated over the years.

Just as Xiumin turns to exit the sinking vessel, he hears more frantic bleating, more desperate pounding. It’s a landling, trapped in a smaller section of the vessel by a barred wall and a closed door. And Xiumin should feel at ease that this landling certainly isn’t escaping, but he makes the mistake of looking at its face. He doesn’t see fear or pain or anger reflected in the features that are so like those of his fellow seafolk. Instead, he sees something that looks an awful lot like awe and a little bit like hope.

The landling clings to the bars, trying to look at Xiumin through the rapidly-shrinking bubble of air trapped inside the belly of the vessel. He's making landling noises, and though his head is in the air pocket, his chest is submerged enough for Xiumin to hear the low rumbling through the water as well. He doesn't sound angry or alarmed, not like he had when Xiumin had turned away. He's repeating the same sounds, sounding rather like Hyunnie when he wants Xiumin to do him a favor.

Except the way this landling's eyebrows tilt up in the middle is cuter than Kk’hyun's saddest seal eyes, and it's too much for Xiumin to bear. He turns away again, uninterested in watching this particular landling drown.

But then the landling does something entirely unexpected: he  _ sings. _

It shouldn't surprise Xiumin that landlings can sing, because they make all sorts of other sounds. But this landling's singing is  _ beautiful, _ and Xiumin has a sudden sharp urge to hear more of it.

Is this how landlings feel when they hear the sirens' call? But surely landlings have no such sorcery. Yixing says that landlings are ruled by industry and mechanics, that they have little use for what they see as superstition. Still, the landling's song is compelling—right up until it dissolves into bubbles as the pocket of air runs out.

Xiumin moves before he can really think about it, darting in to spin and whack his muscular tail against the door keeping the landling confined. He repeats the strike three times before realizing he's not going to succeed before the landling runs out of breath. So he makes for the surface at top speed, wincing at the landling's little squeak of dismay. 

Yixing says landlings have air sacs in their chest that they breathe with, but seafolk have no equivalent structure. So Xiumin gulps air into his stomach, as much as he can hold, then fights the additional buoyancy with powerful strokes of his tail, chasing the sinking vessel.

The landling is pressed to the ceiling when Xiumin returns, trying to suck the thin film of air still clinging to the surface. Xiumin clings to the bars, reaching through to beckon the landling to him. He's a little surprised when the landling immediately catches his hand, allowing himself to be drawn through the water and into Xiumin's embrace. 

The other wreckers do this sometimes, particularly the females—give landlings bubbles of air from their own lips, lull them with kisses and caresses so they stop struggling, allowing the wreckers to easily take them too far below the surface to ever return. Xiumin had never employed such a technique, being both strong enough to easily snap a landling's neck and uninterested in such games. It's a bit ironic that the first time he feeds air to a landling, it's in an attempt to save his life, not end it.

The landling dodges Xiumin's first attempt to bring their mouths together, so he lets a tiny bubble of air slip past his lips. The landling's eyes widen, and then he's mashing their faces together, sucking air from Xiumin's stomach without him having to push it forth. Xiumin pulls away before the landling takes it all, having overheard comparisons of technique that suggest it's better to dole out small amounts. 

The landling tries to keep hold of him but Xiumin slips from his grasp, returning to the door to batter at it again with his tail. Twice he returns to feed the landling more air when he starts making desperate squeaks and is a little concerned that he'll have to return to the now-distant surface for more when the door finally splinters. The landling scrabbles through to Xiumin's side and Xiumin gives him the very last of the air in his stomach before jetting upwards, the landling pressed tight to his body with both arms. It's still a lot less streamlined than Xiumin's used to, but they manage to break the surface just a few heartbeats after the landling releases the last of the air with a sad little sigh.

He gasps as soon as his head is above the water, panting in great gulps of air as Xiumin's senses return to him. What the abyss is he doing, saving a landling? And what the abyss does he think to do with him now?

"Ooh, got yourself a little toy, XiuXiu?"

Nothing. Xiumin can do nothing with him, because of course someone noticed him pull the landling from the vessel, and of course that person had to be Kk’hyun. Having an alert best friend to watch his back usually serves him well, but at the moment he rather wishes every bright flash of scale didn't catch Hyunnie's sharp eyes.

"Ooh, he's a looker. I've never seen you play with a landling before, but I see why he turned your head." Hyun pokes at the landling, smile cruel, laughing when he whines and clings harder to Xiumin’s torso. "Gonna let him join the league-below club before he dies?"

And Xiumin should really just snap the landling's neck and drop him back into the depths to feed the fish. But instead he finds himself saying, "Sure am. Cover for me with the crew for a bit?"

"Of course, Xiu—but you have to tell me all about it later!"

"Of course," Xiumin responds, even managing something resembling a smirk. 

As Kk’hyun watches, Xiumin taps the landling's mouth before opening his own wide, lifting his shoulders and shoving his chest out in an exaggerated mimicry of landling breath as he swallows more air. He repeats the act twice before the landling catches on and takes a deep breath. 

Xiumin pulls him under the water to the sound of Hyun's wicked laughter. He swims straight down at first, because that's what Kk’hyun would expect. But then he breaks off for the chain of islands as fast as his tail can flick, feeding his landling air along the way as needed. They surface in a quiet cove protected by dense vegetation almost all the way around, leaving only a tiny inlet that's all but invisible from the open sea. Then Xiumin hovers half-sideways in the shallows, unwilling to risk beaching himself on the sandy shore, while the landling takes in mindless, shuddering breaths against his chest.

What the deepest depths of the abyss is Xiumin  _ doing? _

The landling starts making noise, the same sounds over and over, gripping Xiumin's shoulders with emphatic fingers. Xiumin lets him go, smiling when he yelps before finding the bottom, the shallow water only shoulder deep once his flailing land tentacles settle against the sand.

"You'll be safe here as long as you don't try to leave," he tells the landling even though he knows he can't understand him. "You can be friends with all the other land creatures that are here already. You can have a nice life, just never try again to cross the sea."

He swims away even as the landling makes sounds back at him.

"Goodbye," he calls, then darts through the inlet and back to the wrecking crew.

He makes up some whaleshit about how playing with a landling wasn't as much fun as everyone says, and Hyun ribs him about it all night. And that should have been the end of it.

And yet it’s only the beginning. 

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

"Wait!"

His calls are no use—all Jongdae can do is stare at the merman's dark, glittering tail, breaking the surface of the water twice as it propels a supposedly mythical creature out of the tiny cove.

Supposedly mythical, yet all too solid as Jongdae had been held close, shooting through the water at a speed as unimaginable as the creature itself. No,  _ himself— _ the chest pressed against Jongdae was decidedly masculine, despite the entire lack of sex characteristics below the waist.

An impossibly handsome, impossible being had sprung him from the brig of his own damn ship and deposited him on some uncharted island. This whole area is uncharted, and now Jongdae can guess why.

It's evidently riddled with dangerously-high seamounts, only a few of which break the surface enough to become islands like the one he’s been left on. The rest lurk just below the surface to snag any ship with a heavy enough draft, becoming curiosities for these singing legends. So instead of being the shortcut to profit his crew-turned-pirates had hoped for when they'd mutinied, planning to sell their former captain for a princely sum back to his family along with their cargo of prized thoroughbreds, it had become their watery grave. Little did they know that Jongdae had joined the merchant marines as a youth because as a fifth son, his family had little use for him and no inheritance to parcel out beyond the first three heirs. The fourth son had joined an abbey, but the cloistered life was not for Jongdae. 

Except it seems he's ended up rather isolated from the rest of the world, anyway. 

Running his fingers through his salt-sodden hair, Jongdae looks around, inhaling deeply in his continuing effort to replace the fishy taste of the air the merman had given him. Not that he'd been complaining at the time—he'd despaired of ever seeing the sun again until he'd realized that what he'd initially thought may be some hypoxic hallucination hadn't been trying to kiss him goodbye but offer him life.

But now Jongdae's been abandoned, albeit on what appears to be a rather habitable island. He can hear the bleating of goats from somewhere, which must mean fresh water is available if they're able to survive. He'd seen the merman release the horses—if the goats were also once domestic, perhaps they'll tolerate milking. And is that a chicken nesting beneath that underbrush? Had the merman also pulled other survivors from wrecks, perhaps also left here along with the animals?

Well. It does at least look like survival is possible, though it still won't be easy, especially if it turns out he’s on his own. He needs shelter, and some way to sanitize water and cook his food. But his ex-crew had stripped him of all his weapons, so he lacks even a blade to help him get started.

Jongdae sighs. Bamboo and palm fronds will do for a simple shelter to start with, enough to keep the sun off. So if the first order of business fails—finding anyone else on this little island—then the second order of business seems to be finding a sharp rock. 

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

He doesn’t find any other human survivors, just a few chickens, the odd horse, and some surly goats. He does see the merman again two days later, though he's fairly sure he's not meant to. It’s just a flash of iridescent tail, then an unmoving shadow out in the cove. Jongdae ducks his head back to the vines he’s tying around the crossed bamboo supports of his flimsy shelter, trying to shore it up enough to support more palm leaves, enough to keep out most of the morning rains at least. The first shower had been welcome, rinsing the accumulated salt off of skin and clothing the way the trickling spring he’d found wasn’t best able to do. But today’s shower had only wet him just as he’d finally felt dry, and he’s rather looking forward to having non-wrinkled fingertips.

He doesn’t drop his gaze entirely to his work, fumbling with the vines half-blind as he tries to watch the cove through his lashes. He has to wait so long he’s almost forgotten what he’s waiting for, and then it happens—another flash of tail, and the shape beneath the water slips out of the inlet and away into the open sea.

Interesting. And proof that Jongdae hadn’t imagined the whole thing. 

It’s still a bit surreal—how beautiful he’d found the merman, even knowing he was about to die. The dismissal in the creature’s too-large, too-dark eyes as he’d turned to leave. The way he’d whirled around when Jongdae, desperate to communicate after running through greetings in every language he knows, had instead sung out wordlessly, trying to mimic the intoxicating song he’d heard right before the ship ran aground.

He’d heard the legends, of course. Any sailor has. About the beautiful, cruel beings that prey upon man like man preys upon beasts. How they lure ships with song to dash upon the rocks, how no victim ever escapes their clutches.

Which is why he’d always dismissed the tales—if no one ever escapes, then how could anyone possibly tell anyone else about the creatures? The fact that the tales existed at all seemed to be proof that the merfolk themselves did not.

And yet there he’d been, staring at one as he ran out of air, muscular and fierce, gills flaring at his neck leaving no doubt as to his place in the world. So he’d tried to mimic the song he’d heard, though he doubts it had magically lured the inept new captain and his pirate crew to their dooms. It might have distracted them, though, something meant as a warning become an inadvertent lure to the unwise. It had certainly gotten the merman’s attention, turning dismissal into curiosity. It had lured the ethereal sea man back to him.

So Jongdae decides that if he sees even a hint of the merman again, to sing out to him. He couldn’t understand the dolphin-like clicks and squeals the guy had made, but it was obvious that it was some kind of language rather than random sounds. He’d been communicating, and while Jongdae has little hope of ever mimicking those sounds well enough to communicate back, he can perhaps at least learn to understand them. But only if he hears more of them, gets the merman to spend enough time with him to trade the sounds they each use for simple things common to both their worlds, like shells and sand and water.

Jongdae’s started from scratch with languages before, and ended up brokering mutually beneficial trade deals with previously uncontacted tribes. He can start from scratch again, if only the merman gives him the chance. Jongdae has no choice but to succeed.

This time, he’ll be bartering for his very life.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

The landling is alive. That’s all Xiumin had wanted to check. He’s alive, he’s building some sort of shelter, he’d looked a bit less bedraggled than when Xiumin had left him. He’d been struggling, sure. But he’d seemed to be succeeding, if not elegantly.

That’s enough. It should definitely be enough. Xiumin spared his life and the landling is living it. End of story.

Except Xiumin still feels responsible for him. He’d had a dream where the landling had lifted him out of the ocean with one of their indiscriminate nets, hauling him into a vessel no matter how Xiumin had yelled and thrashed. Then he’d chucked him into a big bowl of water made out of magically-hardened water on the sides, like the one Kkuwhee had told him about, like she’d once been trapped in when she’d been bitten badly enough by a shark that she’d been unable to swim and had washed up on the shore.

The dolphin had eventually escaped back to the sea when she’d been well, the landlings having foolishly carried her in some sort of harness back to the shore they’d found her on. And she’d been able to thrash free and swim for her life, but in Xiumin’s dream he’s stuck there in that water bowl, the landling staring down at him from above as Xiumin searched and searched for a way out, for somewhere to hide, for something to eat, just  _ anything _ except for the featureless edges of hard water he couldn’t escape.

He hadn’t done that to the landling, not really. Sure, he’s trapped on the island, but Yixing says sometimes landlings live on islands. It’s normal for them to live in smaller places, not like the seafolk who need large territories for their tribes, enough room to hunt and harvest without overtaxing the resources they need to survive.

So the landling is fine on his island. He has other land creatures, he has skills to protect himself, surely he can provide for himself in his new home.

But Xiumin could certainly help him. He could bring him some landling tools scavenged from wrecks and sold as curiosities in the markets, most of them near useless beneath the water. He could bring him a landling net, only a small one, and herd some smelt into his cove for him to catch. He could bring him extra clothing, the useless-to-seafolk tentacle covers to protect his bare limbs from sun and sand, both vicious on seafolk slimecoat and therefore surely painful to a creature without such defenses. 

He could do lots of things to aid the landling. But he really, really shouldn’t.

Xiumin spared his life and he’s taking steps to survive on his own. He’ll be fine, or he won’t, and that’ll be on his own head rather than Xiumin’s. Xiumin has done his part.

Yet somehow Xiumin finds himself dodging the night patrols to toss some spools of landling twine and a finger-length blade onto the shore while the landling sleeps. He wraps the blade in some tentacle-covers and a long-sleeved shirt, ensuring that the small object won’t just be lost among the sand and stones. 

Nobody will miss them. The twine is the sort that tends to rot after a while underwater, only scavenged for temporary purposes like hauling loads rather than any permanent construction. But it should be fine in the air with the landling. The tentacle covers are too mended to make pretty fabric when cut up and reused, so he’d gotten them at the market for only two cowries. And the shirt was one of Xiumin’s own, a plain one that he never wore anymore anyway. Nobody will notice it missing from his wardrobe, least of all himself.

And if he’d left it at that, perhaps all would’ve been well. But Xiumin just has to go back, to see if his gifts were found and used, and that’s his undoing.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

The water of the cove is too shallow to cover Xiumin near the shady edges and too open to conceal him where it’s deep enough for him to stay submerged. Whatever had provoked the rest of the landlings to lock this one up, it wasn’t lack of wits, because not only does he notice Xiumin within moments of him entering the cove, but he doesn’t shout. Instead, he sings again, transforming Xiumin’s startle into a somersault, aborting his reflexive flight and poking his head above the water instead, compelled to hear it better.

It’s a piece of the sirens’ song, just as he’d sung at Xiumin from within the cage. It’s only the surface melody, though, lacking the thinner, whistling descant probably impossible for landlings to produce. Still, it’s a haunting song, all loneliness and desperation, and Xiumin finds himself flicking his tail to move closer without a conscious thought.

It’s one little landling. He’s hardly a threat. Even if he somehow manages to haul Xiumin ashore, Xiumin is stronger, the resisting fluid of his home building muscles far more than moving through thin air. He could easily overpower this slim creature and drag himself back to the sea, arms and tail moving in concert in the way all children are taught to save themselves. Any seafolk who swims near the shoreline has been caught by a wave and flung upon the sand at least once, and some youth even make games of it, seeing who can beach themselves the farthest and still return by themselves to the arms of the sea.

Xiumin is no stranger to these foolish games, though as an adult he condemns his younger self for the risk. But evidently risk is in his blood, because here he is again, sand beneath his tail as he swims close and pushes his torso out of the water to regard the landling.

The landling stares just as intently at Xiumin, and for a moment, their eyes just roam over each other. The landling’s face is more chiseled than Xiumin remembers, strange white-rimmed eyes looking all the darker at their center. His hair is still dark, even when dry, forming soft waves atop his head. He’s wearing the new shirt and tentacle covers Xiumin had left him, though his frame is narrower than Xiumin’s, leaving the surrendered shirt hanging from one shoulder, exposing a collarbone. It’s also rolled up over his forearms, and Xiumin stares at the skin there, uniform in color but darkened on the upper surfaces by a thin layer of fur.

He’s so caught up in his examination that he startles when the landling makes a noise, flipping back below the water until a hasty song pulls him forth again. The landling smiles when Xiumin’s head breaks the surface of the water, singing a little more before tapping his chest and making a new sound.

Xiumin doesn’t flinch this time, just tilts his head, having never attempted to ascribe meaning to the noises landlings make. The lower, chestier tones are more like the calls of the great whales than the lighter chatter of the dolphins, but outside of his song, the landling’s sounds are chopped, harsh, neither flowing or punctate like Xiumin’s own language. But he repeats this sound, patting his own chest, then holds a hand out to Xiumin, brows raised.

When Xiumin only blinks and tilts his head the other way, the landling huffs, repeating the sound and tapping his chest. Then he points to the plant in his hand and makes a different sound, then another sound when pointing to a stone on the beach, and still another sound when pointing to his shelter further up the shore. He points to himself again and repeats the original sound, and Xiumin’s eyes widen.

His name. The landling is trying to tell Xiumin what he’s called.

Again the landling points to Xiumin, tilting his head and lifting a brow.

“Xiumin,” Xiumin says obligingly, pointing at himself. 

He can feel the blood rush warm to his cheeks, not as stark a sensation in the warmer air as it is in the chill of the sea, but still noticeable. What is he doing, introducing himself to a landling? It feels like betrayal, to give any of the cruel creatures anything of the seafolk, even something as small as a single name. It’s not like it’s anything to the landling except a series of sounds. He can’t know he was named for the grace and color of the sea, just as Xiumin has no idea if the sounds the landling labeled himself with mean anything to his own people. But it’s meaningful all the same, especially when the landling tries to repeat Xiumin’s name back to him.

It’s funny how the landling tries so hard to pronounce the whistle that carries the first half of Xiumin’s name, but after several repetitions he gets the last sound close to right.

“Shhhh-min?” the landling repeats, face so earnest.

Xiumin shrugs and chuckles. “Min,” he says, fine with a shorter version of his name rather than subjecting either of them to any more attempts to pronounce it fully.

“Min?” the landling asks, smiling blindingly wide. “Yrr Min?”

“Min,” Xiumin agrees.

The landling bounces on his tentacles, then pats his own chest and makes the sound that must be his own name. He looks at Xiumin expectantly, but Xiumin purses his lips at the unfamiliar sounds.

“Zhh… Shh… Ch—nh? K’aaeeeee?”

The landling laughs, much as Xiumin had at his early attempts to force his voice to stretch in new directions.

“Ch’nkk-aee? Ch’nn…”

Much as Xiumin had, the landling shrugs. “Chen,” he nods, patting his chest agreeably. “Aeem Chen.”

“Chen,” Xiumin repeats. He pats his own chest. “Min.” Then he points to the landling, trying to stretch just his first finger out like the landling had done with his own un-webbed fingers. “Chen.”

The landling bounces again, smile broad enough to screen krill from the summer sea. “Chen,” he agrees, tapping his own chest before extending his finger to Xiumin again. “Min.”

He’s so clearly happy to have traded names, other landling sounds flowing from his mouth rapidly and excitedly, gesturing all around himself and making carefully-distinct noises that are probably the landling words for each object. But landlings aren’t supposed to be cute and friendly, delighting in even basic communication. They’re heartless, careless, cruel, and just because Xiumin had saved this one out of pity doesn’t mean he has to befriend it. Does a dolphin befriend a shark?

Face burning and gills stinging, Xiumin drops back into the water and darts away, out of the cove and around the whole island chain at a near-sprint, unsure exactly what he’s fleeing from but sure that he must get away. What a codfish he is, letting a landling see him like that. What a codfish for not just killing him, for not just letting him drown in the cage his fellows had locked him in.

Xiumin has the same pounding rush of blood in his ears as he had the last time he’d played the beaching game with Hyunnie and their friends, when the wave had pushed him up the beach and over a ridge of stones to land among sticky algae that seemed to cling to his scales, holding him in place as he fought to slide back into the sea. The next wave had lifted him just enough to wriggle clear and over the slick sand, but that had been more than enough for him.

He’d never agreed to play the game again. And he’s learned his lesson here as well. Land and sea are separate, and the land and its denizens are only death to seafolk.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

Jongdae indulges in a pout as he watches the shadow streak beneath the surface and out into the sea. Hadn’t things been going well? What had suddenly scared him off?

“You started blabbering instead of singing, you dummy,” he answers himself. “Maybe human words hurt their ears or something?”

He’d certainly struggled to pronounce Jongdae’s name, more than Jongdae had when trying to repeat his. The whistle was an odd nasal sound that Jongdae’s sure he can reproduce with enough practice, but the merman had seemed physically unable to form hard consonants without converting them to a click. “Chen” is close enough—it wouldn’t have mattered what sound the merman had decided to label him, just that Jongdae could recognize it as referring to himself. The goal is mostly to  _ understand _ each other rather than master each other’s language. It’s much more feasible that Jongdae can learn to recognize Min’s words and get Min to recognize his. Then they can each speak their own language to the other.

But even just seeing the merman in broad daylight had reminded Jongdae that trading words might be more of a challenge than he’d anticipated. With previous language-swap attempts, Jongdae had often started with body parts, because every culture has words for eyes, nose, mouth, and so on. But while Min does have eyes, they’re entirely dark, his nose is flatter with smaller nostrils, and his mouth, while externally similar, is home to an oddly-shaped tongue and fearfully sharp teeth.

At least he hadn’t seemed too uncomfortable with his gills out of the water. Jongdae had briefly wondered if he’d suffocate on land just as Jongdae would in the sea, but air holds more oxygen than water. The merman would probably suffer from becoming too dry, if his gills became too tacky to flare easily, but he’d melted into the water up to his chin periodically to presumably re-wet whatever parts of him needed to stay moist.

How an entire intelligent race of beings had gone unnoticed for so long still boggles Jongdae’s mind. Granted, the merman’s coloring would help obscure his true nature from human eyes, countershaded like most sea creatures, with a darker back and a paler belly. He seems perfectly adapted for life beneath the waves, with webbed fingers, streamlined ears, and hair a soft, shimmering green. But he’d still known that Jongdae needed air, had been able to provide it, had brought Jongdae human clothing and tools as if he knew what he needed to survive.

Evidently, humans have been the subject of study by these beings humanity doesn’t know exist. It makes Jongdae feel small, like when he was a child and figured out some new skill only to realize that every adult had mastered it long ago. What else have these merfolk mastered? If they sound like dolphins, does that mean they can communicate with them? Is it like humans with dogs, a semi-intelligent pet? Or are there really whole dolphin societies? Maybe the sonar readings that scientists view as dolphin “language” were really just merfolk all along.

It exhausts Jongdae to think about, so he focuses on his immediate truths. Min had saved him from the wreck. Min had brought him to a place that Jongdae could live, seemingly on purpose. He brought Jongdae supplies, and has come back to check on him. He was willing to talk with Jongdae, so hopefully he sees him as a fellow sentient being rather than, say, the horses and other domestic animals they’d evidently released to these islands. Surely Min’s not keeping Jongdae as some sort of pet? Surely, if he’s made such an effort to keep Jongdae alive, he’s planning to return him to his people?

_ If humans captured a merfolk, would they ever let it go? _

Jongdae shakes his head at the thought. Humanity has evolved beyond keeping other people in cages. But would they see a merfolk as a person, or just another trainable sea creature? Would their inability to form human speech doom them in human minds as just another “intelligent” animal?

Is that how Min views Jongdae? Was he kept alive to be studied? Trained to do tricks? Will the cove eventually be filled with spectators, waiting for Jongdae to perform? Is he some musical act in the making, saved because he proved himself able and willing to sing for rewards?

Does any of it matter, as long as Jongdae’s alive and unhurt?

_ It does matter. _ Jongdae needs Min to see him as an equal. He needs to convince him to return him to other people. He’s already going a little nuts from having only himself to talk to and it’s only been two weeks according to Jongdae’s tally of the passing days.

No man is an island. But Jongdae’s marooned on one, entirely alone, and his only contact with the outside world is a member of another species entirely.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

It would be so much easier to forget about the landling if he didn’t know the damn thing’s name. Now instead of thinking about him in the abstract, Xiumin thinks of Chen, his specific landling, one that seems to break with everything Xiumin knows about landlings as a species.

Maybe he was in the cage because he’s not like the rest of his kind? Maybe he’s some other race of landlings, one that doesn’t invade the seas and exploit them?

Xiumin dismisses the idea as ridiculous. He looks just like all the other landlings—it never matters what color their skin is or how their features are shaped. They’re all selfish, wasteful, and heartless. If this Chen seems different, it’s because he knows he’s trapped. He’s desperate to survive, like any living thing, and he needs Xiumin, like he’d needed Xiumin to break him free of the cage. It’s a ruse, like a cuttlefish changing color to distract, blend in, save its own life, and Xiumin’s not going to fall for it.

He stays away from the landling for half a dozen cycles of the tide. But the landling refuses to stay out of his thoughts, and Xiumin finds himself returning to the cove every few tide-cycles, bringing little things that Chen might make use of to be more comfortable in his new home. Chen always seems happy to see Xiumin, excited about the gifts, had gaped in awe when Xiumin had brought him an entire marlin.

He’d told himself he wasn’t looking to impress Chen with his hunting ability, he was proving that this landling was just as wasteful and entitled as the rest of them. But Chen had kept repeating the same grateful sound that he always did when Xiumin brought him things, and he’d butchered the massive fish so carefully. He’d kept almost everything, using the long bill as a tool, catching sea birds with the offal, even turning the bones into tools to stitch together his ruined clothes. He’d made such happy noises as he’d eaten, too, hanging the flesh he couldn’t finish right away over that strange flickering heat that sometimes consumes wrecked vessels before they sink. He’d piled damp seaweed up to make the air cloud beneath the fish, carefully tending the whole thing before storing the then-shriveled-up flesh away, presumably to eat later.

He hadn’t been wasteful. He’d been grateful and respectful, and he keeps trying to communicate with Xiumin. Xiumin has at least resisted that, has refused to relinquish any more seafolk secrets, has stayed silent despite Chen’s babble or singing or hand gestures. Xiumin may be a fool, but he’s not a traitor. Any live human is potentially dangerous, despite their physical inferiority.

Xiumin’s gills flare when he realizes he’s stored up yet another netful of items for Chen without even meaning to. Things just remind him of Chen now, the bright yellow of the unfiltered sun, the glint of landling tools bringing to mind a certain landling’s gleaming smile. He stares down at his bundle of accumulated offerings, tethered at the tail-end of his bed, bobbing gently in the ever-circulating current that brings fresh, breathable water through the coral walls.

“Where is it?”

Xiumin whirls, annoyed that he’d not felt the shift in current when Kk’hyun had entered his room. This landling is far too distracting, even if Xiumin never brings him anything again. This time, it’s only his best friend, but next time could be a hungry shark or an entangling squid.

“Where’s what?” Xiumin asks, drifting onto his bed and waiting for his heart to slow again.

“The landling.” Kk’hyun crosses his arms, leveling a narrow gaze at him. “I know you didn’t kill it.”

“Sure I did,” Xiumin protests, curling forward to glare right back. “Why the abyss wouldn’t I?” It’s a question he asks himself daily.

“I don’t spawning know! But I know you didn’t play with it, or if you tried, you spawning failed.”

“What do you mean? I told you it wasn’t fun, you already know that.”

“You didn’t even get its clothes off,” Kk’hyun scoffs. “I’ve been thinking about it, and you were incredibly vague about the whole thing. Do you even know where a landling vent is?”

“Of course I do—between the tentacles.”

“Is that where their papilla is?”

“Where else would it be?”

“Just dangling off the front of their body.”

Xiumin laughs. “Now I know you’re giving me whale shit.”

“I am not. Ask Yixing.”

“I will,” Xiumin says, seizing the chance to escape. “I’ll go ask him right now.”

“Ha! So you admit you don’t know.”

Xiumin flutters water through his gills. “Look, Hyunnie—I told you it wasn’t fun. I just wasn’t excited about any of it, so I just dumped him, okay? Happy now? I’m sorry I lied.”

“You’re still lying,” Hyun states. “You keep sneaking off, and I know you’re going to the islands. I’m going to get Sehun to follow you—he can keep up with your unfair speed.”

The water suddenly feels extra chilly around him. “I’m not sneaking off—I’m just keeping fit. If you exercised with me more often, you’d be able to keep up.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Kk’hyun declares. 

Then his face goes soft and he drifts over to rest beside Xiumin on his bed. Xiumin hates other people on his bed—bad enough when he has to pick his own scales out of the strands of kelp—but he tolerates it, unwilling to irritate his best friend further.

“Xiu,” Kk’hyun whistles softly. “We’ve all found cute ones that are harder to kill. That’s what friends are for, though. Just tell me where it is and I’ll dispose of it, then you can pretend it never happened.”

“There’s nothing to dispose of.”

“Xiu.”

“Hyun.”

“Kk’im Xiumin. Are you really lying to your best friend right now? We were fry together! I know all your tells, and I  _ will _ find out. But why would you keep something from me in the first place?”

Kk’hyun pouts, eyes wide and sad, and Xiumin hates it even though he knows it’s entirely fake.

“You have to promise me not to tell anyone. Ever.”

“Of course I won’t tell anyone!”

“Promise,” Xiumin insists, lifting his tail in Kk’hyun’s direction.

Kk’hyun rolls his eyes. “What are we, five?” he asks, but he lifts his tail to twine it around Xiumin’s in the childhood gesture of a solemnly shared secret. Then he looks at Xiumin expectantly.

The tightness in his gills makes the water riffle over them turbulently, an audible sign of his tension. “I took the landling to an island like we do with the other land creatures. Sometimes I check on it.”

Kk’hyun just stares at him. Then he blinks several times, spreading thick protective secretions over his eyes as if in sandy water.

“What the deepest depths of the spawning abyss, Kk’im Xiumin?”

“I know!” Xiumin squeaks, voice strained. “I know it’s dangerous and dumb and I never should have done it, but I did and I’m not letting you or anyone else kill it.”

“Someone has to,” Kk’hyun insists. “If you’re such a jellyfish about it, I’ll do it gently. I’ll sing him into the sea, Xiu, you know I’m the best at it. He’ll be mesmerized and won’t even know what’s happening, and I’ll snap his neck so it’s over in an instant.”

“No!”

“Well, you can’t just leave it there! What if it escapes and tells the rest of them and they come back with their sinking explosions to kill us all?”

“He can’t escape. No other landlings even know to look for him.”

“You can’t be sure! And even if he doesn’t escape, what if someone else finds out? They’ll report you to Suho and then they’ll kill your little pet slowly and probably throw your tail in a cell for such recklessness.”

“I know,” Xiumin whines. “I know it’s dangerous. But I can’t even think about someone hurting him, Hyunnie.”

“Why?” Kk’hyun asks, fingers firm on Xiumin’s arm. “We dispose of landlings all the time and you never even blink. Why is this one any different?”

“I don’t know,” Xiumin admits. “He’s just—the other landlings on his vessel had put him in a cage like one of their animals. And he sang to me, Kk’hyun. He tried to sing the siren song when I released the long-tailed land creatures. He trusted me so easily, no fear at all. It felt like killing a baby seal or something, not like eliminating a threat.”

“So you got suckered in by seal eyes and a song?”

“Basically,” Xiumin huffs, curling forward and sliding fingers into his hair. “Hyun, what am I going to do? We told each other our names. He tries to talk with me. He uses every little thing I bring him—”

“You bring him stuff?”

“—and he’s so smiley and thankful and excited. He’s really spawning  _ cute, _ Hyunnie.”

“Abyssal spawn, Kk’im Xiumin. You’re in love with him.”

“I am not.”

“You are, too.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. How could I even? Landlings aren’t anything to fall in love with any more than a whale is. We’re in no way compatible aside from the most basic communication. There would be entirely no point.”

“Love makes the ridiculous seem rational,” Hyun says, borrowing Yixing’s sage voice.

Xiumin gives him a shove. “What would you even know about it? You’re such a scatter-spawner.”

“I appreciate variety,” Kk’hyun states, giving Xiumin a haughty look. “Nothing wrong with that as long as everyone’s expectations are clear from the beginning.” He curls back toward Xiumin. “Maybe that’s what  _ you _ need—some pretty little thing to distract you. The pufferfish are dancing their little circles out in front of the reef right now—a nice, romantic ambiance for an encounter.”

“No,” Xiumin says, gut churning. “I don’t—shitspawn, Hyun. What the abyss am I going to do?”

He’d always known he couldn’t keep the landling on the island forever. At the beginning, he half-expected to find him dead, which he would have been disappointed about. But he could tell himself he’d tried, and move on with his life guilt-free. But Chen keeps surviving, and every visit he looks sadder and sadder to see Xiumin go. He’d even wailed last time, leaking water from his eyes alarmingly and wading out into the cove, as if he’d try to follow. Xiumin had hovered near the island for a long time after that, just in case the landling really did attempt to swim, but Chen had never emerged from the cove.

Hyun flutters his gills in thought, water burbling over them. “Well, I originally came to find you because the patrols have reported an incoming vessel so Suho’s scheduled a wreck for tonight. It might be just the thing to remind you why landlings aren’t cute little pets.”

Xiumin’s stomach rolls. “Hyunnie, I—I don’t think I can. At least not as a wrecker. I’ll ask to join the scavengers instead. I’m usually good at determining what we can use from the vessel and what’s just more landling refuse to add to the reef.”

Kk’hyun gives Xiumin the softest look. “Part of me says I should tell Suho right now, make sure your landling is disposed of before you get any more attached.”

“No!”

“But I love you too much to be the one to break your heart, so I’m going to make Yixing do it for me.”

“Yixing?”

“Yep. Come on.” Kk’hyun tugs at Xiumin’s tail. “I won’t tell Suho if you tell Yixing instead. If anyone knows what to do with landlings, you know it’s him.”

Xiumin sputters, but he knows Kk’hyun’s not wrong. “Fine,” he agrees eventually, letting himself be herded toward his—and Chen’s—fate.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

Jongdae doesn’t see Min for days after he’d broken down and begged him not to leave. He kicks himself for the useless display of emotion, obviously alarming to the merman. He’d been more than a little convinced he’d finally scared him off for good, but at the time he couldn’t help himself. His tally shows that it’s been over three months since Min had brought him to the island, and physically, he’s surviving well.

Mentally, he’s spiralling toward either madness or depression.

He never thought he minded being alone before. In fact, he often preferred it, uninterested in nights out on the town with the rest of the lads. But when being alone isn’t a choice, it starts to feel like punishment. He talks to himself all the time now, just to hear a friendly voice. Except the voice is becoming less friendly. These days it just seems worn out.

When the sun sets on his hundredth day on the island, Jongdae finds himself staring at the entrance to the cove like a starving man stares at a bakery window. Freedom is right there, yet completely out of reach. It’s ironic that he’d been so grateful to be broken out of the brig, when he’d ended up just as imprisoned after all.

The waves that evening are especially rhythmic, reminding him of the cadence of an old, sad song. He lets it flow out of him like a retreating tide, carrying all his melancholy out into the purpling sky. He shuts his eyes, letting himself sink into the melody, pouring himself out at the edge of the sea.

When he opens his eyes, Min is in the cove.

“Hi,” Jongdae murmurs. “Do you always come when I sing? Is that the secret?”

The merman hasn’t made a sound since their initial exchange of names, so Jongdae almost doesn’t recognize it when he suddenly speaks.

“Chen,” Min says, gliding closer with the flick of his elegant tail. He slides right up on to the beach, propping his torso up with webbed fingers spread wide over wet sand. “Chen,” he says again, “wai’kk.”

“What?”

Min nods, then scrunches his face and shakes his head. “Waaaai… Kk.”

The final click is soft, as if Min knows it’s not quite the right sound. Jongdae runs through all similar-sounding words, bearing in mind the limited number of consonants Min can produce. He hadn’t thought the merman had payed any attention to his attempts at language lessons, but he’s clearly trying to communicate, clearly finding it awkward, so it must be an attempt at Jongdae’s language rather than an expression of his own.

“Wait?”

Min nods, giving him a tiny smile. “Wai’kk. S’hoon saaiff.”

“Safe?” Jongdae interprets. “Soon?”

Min nods again, smile soft but spreading. “Chen,” he says again, almost a laugh.

He’s ethereal in the twilight, the setting sun gilding the curves of his musculature and the edges of his scales. He tries to tell himself it’s just the loneliness that draws him to drop to the sand beside Min, legs beyond the low water line, gentle waves rolling water intermittently up to his chest.

They just sit there like that for a moment, caught between sea and shore. Min’s eyes roam over Jongdae’s body like they always do, perhaps checking for injuries. Then the merman starts to sing.

It’s soft but reedy, a sort of whistling moan, tune nothing Jongdae’s ever heard. It’s not the song he’d heard before the shipwreck but something sweeter, warmer, and Jongdae’s so lost in it he doesn’t realize Min has moved closer until it ends, last lingering note an ache in Jongdae’s chest.

Min’s face is right in front of Jongdae’s, big eyes partially hidden by smooth eyelids, smile soft and perhaps a little shy. He’s so like a dream that Jongdae has to lift a hand to trail fingertips over his face, sucking in a gasp when Min presses a slick cheek against Jongdae’s palm.

“Chen,” he says again, close enough that Jongdae can see how his gills flare with the sound.

“Min,” Chen responds just as softly. “Thank you.”

He’s not sure what he’s thanking him for, exactly, but he’s used that phrase so much that if Min’s picked up those other words, he surely must have figured out that Jongdae’s grateful. For his presence, for this possible hope—he’s not sure what ‘safe’ means to a merfolk and whether that equates to his own definition, but Min seems to think it’s something that Jongdae should know, that Min is happy about—he’s not sure he’s ever seen the merfolk smile so much, wasn’t even sure if the expression was part of a merfolk’s repertoire.

But Min’s definitely smiling in response to Jongdae’s words, and it’s almost overwhelming. Min sees him, is trying to help him, is trying to make himself understood. And Jongdae truly is grateful, and that’s why he leans in and kisses him.

His senses kick in a second later—the sudden awareness that Min may not actually be attracted to him/humans/males/anyone, the realization that this may not be a way merfolk even express themselves, a reminder that their previous mouth-to-mouth contact had been practical and impersonal. But Min’s lips are moving against his in a way that suggests this custom at least is shared between their people, and Jongdae’s ability to be cautious is swept away by more desperate emotions.

He wraps his arms around Min, pulling him down to lie sideways on the sand, waves licking around their hips as they kiss. Min hesitates, then curves an arm around Jongdae in return, tightening the hold whenever Jongdae squeezes him.

Jongdae doesn’t care about the fact that Min isn’t human. He’s unconcerned about how quickly he becomes aroused, given that it’s been over half a year since anyone else has touched him at all, much less held him like this. He is, however, sputteringly concerned with the wave that rolls up higher than the rest, washing over his chest and up his nose.

He sits up, coughing and snorting the seawater out of his airways while Min looks on with wide, slow-blinking eyes. Jongdae smiles at him to indicate that he’s all right despite the continued wheezing—his sinuses are burning, but he hadn’t actually inhaled any.

Min pats him on the leg, giving him a broad smile. “S’hoon,” he says again, then flips himself back into the cove and disappears beneath the waves.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

The list of things Yixing had asked him to get is long and several of the items are costly or dangerous to obtain. But after seeing Chen, Xiumin is full of determination to get all of them as soon as possible. It would have been something he’d felt obligated to do regardless of how the visit had gone, but Chen had come to the water’s edge and sat with Xiumin, of his own motivation rather than Xiumin’s wish. And he’d looked delighted when Xiumin sang the courting song for him, even though Xiumin is well aware that Chen can’t possibly understand the significance.

But he must have understood  _ something, _ because he’d kissed Xiumin, not to sip breath from his stomach but simply to taste him, to move sensitive skin against sensitive skin in a way that proves right those assertions that landlings kiss when they’re attracted, too, that they lean in to their future killer originally to share pleasure rather than suck in air that will delay their death.

But soon, lack of air won’t be a threat to Chen anymore. The thought spurs him on, and Kk’hyun, for all his teasing, proves himself the most loyal of friends by helping however he can. It’s Xiumin’s wish, so he has to be the one to gather everything Yixing needs, but Hyunnie helps by dumping his spongebank of saved-up cowries on Xiumin’s bed and refusing to take them back, by keeping a lookout for predators while Xiumin scours wrecks and reefs, seafloor and shoreline for the oddities required.

And Kk’hyun’s at Xiumin’s side, grinning just as wide when, less than a moon-cycle later, Xiumin hauls his acquisitions to Yixing’s shelter, an old but mostly intact vessel that’s too unnatural, too  _ landling _ for anyone else to be interested in. As usual, Yixing’s cuttlefish swims out to escort them to his master, short tentacles fluttering along with his mantle as he changes colors rapidly in excitement. 

“Who did you bring to see us, Cat?” Yixing asks his pet. “Ah, of course—our desperate lovebird.”

“What’s a lovebird?”

“Oh, a landling expression,” Yixing dismisses, using several of his long black tentacles to take the items Xiumin has brought and start mashing them into a disgusting paste. “They’re like seabirds, but they live inland. They mate for life, and it’s said one dies without the other.”

“Chen’s not going to die,” Xiumin says. “We’ll save him.”

“That’s the plan, but you know it’ll be his choice.”

“He’ll choose me,” Xiumin says, but there’s no small edge of doubt in his mind. What if Chen doesn’t really love  _ him, _ but just wants any way off the island? What if he  _ doesn’t _ actually want to leave the island?

What if he’d rather die than give up everything he is?

“He will,” Kk’hyun agrees. “I went to see him, you know.”

“You what?”

“I had to see if he was really all that special, Xiu, it’s the best friend’s job to measure up your crushes.”

“He’s not a crush,” Xiumin says, suddenly too cold. “What did he do? Did he talk to you?”

“Sure did. But I don’t know if he’s really as smart as you think he is—all he said was “Min, Min, Min,” and he kept looking behind me, like he was waiting for someone else.”

Xiumin’s not sure why that makes him flood with warmth, but he can feel his face stretch into a grin. “He can’t say ‘Xiu’ very well,” he explains. “But it’s really cute when he tries.”

“You’re disgusting,” Kk’hyun condemns.

“Agreed,” Yixing adds, but he’s laughing as he passes the disgusting wad of paste from tentacle to hands. He mutters hard, sharp words and squeezes, and when he’s done, the wad is a ball small enough to be hidden easily in a fist.

“Take this nidus and plant it in a giant clam on the night of the new moon,” Yixing instructs, passing the ball to Xiumin. “Make sure you stick it in deep—it needs to be completely encapsulated. Come back on the night of the full moon to retrieve it, and bring it back to me.”

“Yes, Yixing,” Xiumin says, eyeing the unassuming sphere with reverence. He doesn’t need to understand Yixing’s methods to have complete faith in the results.

“I’ll come with you,” Kk’hyun says, gliding his tail against Xiumin’s. “I’ll bring the skate snout in case you need it.”

Xiumin gives him a grateful smile despite the implied offer of amputation. Giant clams are dangerous, easily lethal if they close on someone then unable to free themselves. Xiumin will need to be quick and clever to lodge the nidus where it needs to go, but he’s not going to just chuck it in and hope to fate. No, he’ll make sure it’s where it needs to be.

Chen is depending on him, and Xiumin won’t fail.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

Jongdae doesn’t see Min for over a week after their kiss, but he tells himself not to worry. Doesn’t it always happen that some big advancement in their relationship seems to make the merman shy for a while? He’s always come back, and he’d said Jongdae would be ‘soon safe.’ He surely doesn’t mean to abandon him after such a promise.

But the next merfolk he sees, much to his surprise, isn’t Min. This one is slimmer, with softer, more gracile features in contrast to Min’s rounded face and compact, muscular torso. But the new one has a shorter tail, shaded more of a deep green rather than Min’s dark indigo.

Jongdae’s first reaction is dread. “Where’s Min?” he asks, even though it’s unlikely this merman knows any of his speech. “Is he okay? Oh, shit, is Min hurt?”

He scans the cove beyond the newcomer for the more familiar shadow, but nothing else ripples beneath the waves.

“Do you even know Min? Sshhheuuu-mmin?” he tries, trying to tell himself that absence is no indication of misfortune.

He’s strangely reassured by the merman’s laugh. It’s somehow familiar, as if he’s heard it before—and then Jongdae remembers the merman that had reached for him after Min had pulled him to the surface, the one that had laughed as Min had pulled him under again to take him to this island.

So this merman isn’t some random encounter—he must be here because of Min in some capacity. And he seems to recognize Jongdae’s attempt to form mer-speech. He chatters back, all rapid clicks and high whistles, then thumps his own chest, making a sound that to Jongdae’s ears is a sharp click dissolving into a short whine, like glass against rubber.

Jongdae should probably care what this merman’s name is, should probably calm down and try to communicate methodically to get the information he needs, but his mind is a maelstrom of all the things that could have happened to his Min out there in the vastness of the sea.

“Goddamnit, where is Min?” he demands. “You know Min, you were there the night of the wreck. Did you hurt Min? Make him tell you I’m here?”

The merman drops his head back and sputters through his gills, producing a noise that, if he were human, would indicate exasperation. Then he swims close, enunciating slowly as if Jongdae were a particularly slow child, like Jongdae is going to understand magically if the sounds come out slower. But he at least understands one word—the whistling pronunciation of Min’s full name.

“Yes, Min!” Jongdae agrees. “Is Min okay? Min—” Jongdae does his best to mime death, sticking his tongue out and flopping over into the sand.

He opens his eyes to peals of squeaking laughter as the merman shakes his head. “Min,” he says, mimicking Jongdae’s accented pronunciation. Then he zips around the pool, gaze intense, a webbed hand shading his eyes, before curling his hands into fists against his chest.

“Cheenn,” he coos, then bursts into laughter again. He does a backflip, chatters something else containing Min’s name, and darts off, tail gleaming emerald in the sun before melting into the green of the sea.

Jongdae has to wait another two agonizing weeks for his fears to be fully relieved. But Min finally returns, drifting into the cove with the morning tide. He’s moving slowly and Jongdae runs into the surf, catching him below the arms and reflexively hauling his shoulders above the water.

Min looks at him, clearly startled, but he doesn’t pull away, answering Jongdae’s awkwardly apologetic smile with a warmer one of his own. But Jongdae’s smile dissolves when he sees Min’s right arm, bruised and scraped all the way from knuckles to armpit.

With a gasp, Jongdae reaches for the injured arm. “What happened? Is this why you’ve been gone so long?”

The dismissive noise Min makes in response is instantly recognizable as macho denial of any reason for concern. It only makes Jongdae press his lips together more firmly—he’s made such a scoff himself on occasion, and every time whatever injury has hurt like the devil. But he’d never liked being fussed over, especially when it was an injury acquired by his own folly, as it typically was. He’d had more guts than sense as a youth.

“What happened?” he asks again, more gently, unable to resist prying a little.

Min makes a sound, then lifts his hands out of the water, heels touching, fingers curled back on themselves. He holds them at right angles, then makes a sharp click as he brings them together, curled fingers interlocking.

“Something closed, and your arm was caught?” Jongdae guesses. To his eyes, the merman looks in good body condition, not like he’d been stuck somewhere and starving for two weeks. The scrapes look pretty fresh, but he still has no idea what happened or when. He decides it doesn’t matter, electing to hug Min close and be glad he’s there rather than wonder about why he’d been gone.

“Chen,” Min chuckles against Jongdae’s shoulder. 

Jongdae releases him after only a moment, afraid to squeeze too hard in fear of other bruises hidden beneath the darker blue-gray skin over Min’s back and shoulders. But Min’s smiling softly when Jongdae’s pulled back enough to see his face, and his intent is clear when he leans in again. Jongdae eagerly meets his lips, still so amused that for all their differences, in some ways, humans and merfolk are very much alike.

It’s not until Min pulls away with a chuckle that Jongdae realizes they’ve drifted well away from shore. Furthermore, he’s basically latched on to Min like a barnacle, arms and legs wrapped around Min’s rhythmically flexing torso as the merman treads water for both of them with that amazing tail.

“Shut up,” Jongdae huffs, shifting his grip so his weight is away from Min’s injured side. “I missed you, you scaly ass. I’m all alone on this damn island, and some smartmouth shows up to sass me and make me worry about you, and then  _ you— _ Stop laughing!”

“Chen,” Min croons, voice like a caress. He’s curled his left arm loose around Chen’s waist, evidently unstrained by the effort required to keep both of them upright with their shoulders above the surface. “Saaiff.”

“You’d better be safe,” Jongdae growls. “What would I do if something happened to you, huh? Just live here by myself forever, talking to the goats? The billy is so rude, Min, I swear he’s plotting against me all the time and—” 

Min’s laugh is delightful, even if Jongdae knows it’s at his expense. The way his cheeks bunch up, sacrificing their sleekness in service of mirth, is too endearing. So Jongdae just presses a kiss against the closest one, the slip of Min’s slick skin unusual but not unpleasant.

“You’re an ass,” he informs the merman. “Even if you don’t really seem to have one. I’m sure you shit somehow, and whatever part of you does that, that’s what I’m calling you. I hope it’s a very offensive term in polite company, and I’d say it very loudly, in front of that other mer-hole that was here before, too.”

“S’aah-eee,” Min says. “Chen, saaiff. S’hoon.”

“You keep saying that,” Jongdae huffs. “When is ‘soon?’ When…” Jongdae frowns, unable to think how to pantomime the concept of time. He settles for pointing at the sky—surely the merfolk have words for day and night, as the sun would penetrate these clear waters fairly deeply. “When ‘soon?’ When safe?”

“Saaiff,” Min agrees, lifting his battered right arm to the sky. He curves his hand into a crescent, making a whistling sort of sound. He repeats the sound, arcing his curved hand through the sky.

“The moon?” Jongdae guesses. “There was no moon last night, Min.”

Min repeats the same whistle, shaking his hand to emphasize it. “S’hoon,” he states. Then he releases Jongdae to lift his left arm to join the first, curving both hands to outline a circle against the sky. “Saaiff.” He repeats the gestures—the crescent alone for ‘soon’ and the circle for ‘safe.’

“Do you mean the full moon? When the crescent is a circle?”

“Saaiff,” Min repeats, dropping his arms back into the water and curving the left one around Jongdae again. “Chen saaiff.”

Jongdae lifts a brow. “Min safe?” He wants no more of this arm-mangling stuff. He’s entirely confused as to what will happen to cause this safety, but the price had better not be any harm to the merman he’s grown so attached to.

To his relief, Min nods. “Min saaiff. Chen saaiff. Min-Chen-saaiff.”

“Good.”

Min smiles at him, all-black eyes curving above those scrunched-up cheeks. He’s adorable and Jongdae gives in to the urge to kiss him again.

He may not know what the hell’s going on. He may have no idea if Min really cares for him or if kissing a human is a fun little game for him, like petting a cat or pinching a baby’s cheeks. But even if Min plans to eat him or something, if ‘saaiff’ really means the mer equivalent of  _ barbecue, _ Jongdae has to let himself believe. What’s the point in his daily exertions, distilling water, finding food, shoring up his shelter against the rainy season already beginning to show him exactly where all the holes in his roof are on a daily basis? Without hope, Jongdae would fall headlong into an ocean’s worth of despair.

He’d rather dive into the bottomless pools of Min’s smiling eyes.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

There are roughly two weeks between a new moon and a full one, and compared to the length of time Jongdae’s already spent on the island, it seems like no time at all. Especially since Min visits him every few days, bringing him things that are clearly meant as adornment rather than any sort of practical survival assistance. Jongdae must be the only castaway in history who lives in a leaky bamboo hut with coral rings on his fingers and strands of shells around his neck.

It’s hard not to interpret the gifts as some type of courting, especially when Min likes to put them on Jongdae himself while singing to him, wordless songs accompanied by intense gazing and sometimes knuckles gliding against his face. There’s lots of kissing, too, and Jongdae ends up aroused and aching, unsure what, if anything, Min would ever want to do about the whole below-the-waist situation. The merman seems entirely unaware of Jongdae’s predicament, sleek body never seeming to change in any fashion. Maybe merfolk don’t experience arousal the way humans do? Or is Min actually female, chest masculine because they don’t feed their young the way mammals do? Is Min a mammal? He has hair, but he breathes water instead of air like a dolphin or other aquatic mammal.

Jongdae has no idea. He never thought he’d be furiously making out with a mythical creature, wondering if he’s supposed to be groping for some sort of hole or slit, if there’s some erogenous zone he’s yet to stimulate that will unlock Min’s secrets for him to explore. It’s weird to think about, but it’s not like he wants to breed with the merman, if that’s even some kind of possible. He just wants to make Min feel good, to watch him come apart in Jongdae’s arms, to provide him with the utmost in physical pleasure, whatever that may be for his kind.

Maybe kissing is it. Which would be fine, if Jongdae only knew. But he doesn’t, and he has no way to ask short of either whipping his own dick out or awkwardly groping the merman’s tail in hopes of finding some divot or protrusion that seems especially sensitive. So Jongdae does his best to express his affection in other ways, stringing pretty shells on fishing line and hoping they don’t have complicated meanings like flowers sometimes do.

When he presents his creation to Min, on the night before the full moon, the merman looks at him for a long time, mouth slightly open, smooth eyelids blinking repeatedly, some kind of thickened tears building up in the corners. As Min usually does, Jongdae sings a little song, a verse from some sappy love ballad popular in the last port he’d been in, as he loops the string of shells around Min’s wrist and ties it securely. Min has expected Jongdae to wear his strands around his neck, but Min has gills there and Jongdae has no clue how those would work with a necklace.

Thankfully, Min seems deeply touched by the bracelet rather than offended that Jongdae had put the shells in a different place. He usually just lets Jongdae hug him, wrapping a steadying arm around him and using the other to occasionally balance them in the water, but now he’s running both arms fleetingly over Jongdae’s sides. He keeps repeating Jongdae’s mer-name more squeakily than usual and running his hands lightly over Jongdae’s back and shoulders, and suddenly Jongdae wonders if that’s some sort of invitation or request, if perhaps he wants Jongdae to take off his shirt.

The sun’s low enough not to be dangerous—Jongdae had begun to suspect that Min visits in morning or evening because his own skin isn’t accustomed to the glare of the sun. Perhaps Jongdae should have undressed for Min long ago, the merman adhering to some sort of societal politeness or boundary that Jongdae’s unaware of. But Min rarely wears anything on his own torso—He’s showed up in a vest a few times, and the rare times he had come closer to midday, he’d worn a full-length long sleeve shirt so like the one he’d first brought Jongdae that they must have been made by or for the same person. Clothing had never seemed particularly important to the merman, and suddenly Jongdae feels, more than usual, that his own is in the way.

But when he starts to fumble at the buttons with one hand, other arm around Min’s shoulder to keep his head above water, Min freezes, curving one arm around Jongdae’s back and catching his struggling fingers with his free hand, still slightly bruised from whatever misadventure had befallen him two weeks ago. For a moment, Jongdae thinks Min’s going to help him undress, but he looks up at Min’s squeak to see him shaking his head.

“Why not?”

He doesn’t expect an answer. He accepts the gentle kiss Min gives him, a common response when Jongdae says something Min doesn’t understand. But when Jongdae tries to shrug out of his shirt again, Min squeaks again, more sharply, drawing Jongdae’s brows together with frustration.

“S’hoon,” Min murmurs, delivering another kiss. “ChenChen, saaiff, s’hoon.”

He’s so earnest that Jongdae’s heart clenches even as a laugh bubbles from his tense throat. “Do merfolk have religion?” he asks, accepting Min’s I-don’t-understand kiss. “Can we not until we’re mer-married? Or do you mean ‘safe’ as in ‘safe time of the month?’ Min, are you a mer _ maid? _ Is there actually a difference?”

Min gives him a kiss after each question, the one after the last inquiry extra long and insistent, the sweetest sort of “shut up” if Jongdae’s interpretation is correct. It makes him laugh again, causing Min to release a frustrated squeal.

“Chennieeee,” Min whines, but it ends in whistling laughter. He catches Jongdae’s face briefly, releasing him as soon as Jongdae’s eyes are focused on his face. He holds up the wrist newly adorned with Jongdae’s carefully-chosen shells. “Shaan’kk eeeuuu.”

The pronunciation may be imprecise, but the meaning is perfectly clear.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

Jongdae’s not sure what he expects to happen the night the full moon rises to brighten his little island to near daylight, reflecting from the ocean in a way that seems to make everything melt into silver, sea and sand and sky a wholly united landscape. Stomach still flipping every time he remembers the ardor in the depths of Min’s eyes as he’d thanked him, Jongdae sits on the beach just above the waves that draw ever nearer as the moon sails through the sky.

The moon is straight overhead and Jongdae is submerged to his shoulders by the time a stray ripple in the water catches his eye. Two ripples—no, three, as a trio of heads break the surface. It’s Min, of course it is, but he’s accompanied by the sassy merman who’d visited him before along with a new face, handsome in a way that’s less smooth than the other two, like a pebble that’s spent less time in the waves.

Jongdae stands up, wading out further into the water and catching hold of Min when he’s tackled along with the next wave. His laughter reveals the edge of his nerves, Jongdae unable to swallow the thick lump of anticipation this moonlight gathering has kindled. But his attention is stolen from Min’s moonlit face when the new merman produces words Jongdae can actually understand.

“Greetings,” he says, offering a dimpled smile in response to Jongdae’s gape. “I’m Yixing, and while your ‘Min’ calls you Chen, I’m guessing that’s not quite your actual name.”

“It’s Jongdae,” Jongdae admits, “but really, I don’t mind being called Chen if it’s easier.”

Yixing nods. “If you plan to continue your association with the seafolk, choosing a name kind to their tongues will ultimately be kinder to your ears.” His own speech is rather accented and nasal but still very understandable, with none of the missing consonants that Min struggles with.

“I do plan to continue,” Jongdae says, wondering if Min’s speech will ever smooth out so much if they practice enough. “I mean, if I can continue? Min keeps saying I’ll be safe soon, but I’m afraid I haven’t managed to discern exactly what he means by that.”

“Min is viewing tonight’s choice with rose-colored glasses, or whatever the aquatic equivalent would be. Metaphor is a hard thing to adapt to a new language, I’ve discovered.”

“So… I won’t be safe?”

Yixing shrugs. “That depends on your definition of ‘safe,’ I suppose. But you’ll be offered choices, and your wishes will be honored.”

Jongdae’s up to his neck in water, yet his throat is suddenly dry. “What sort of choices?”

“Surely you’d agree that you can’t continue to live on this island indefinitely.”

Jongdae frowns. “I think I could sustain myself here for quite some time—if I didn’t go mad of solitude. Min’s been helping with that, though—”

“And every time he visits, he’s risking both of your lives. But as he can’t stay away—and you’d seemingly prefer him not to—we find ourselves at this turning of the tide.”

Yixing lifts a hand to gesture to the full moon, bringing it down to reveal a gleaming pearl in the palm of his hand. The movement is so fluid that Jongdae is compelled to glance again at the sky to reassure himself that the moon is still in its place rather than shining from Yixing’s hand.

“Your people, whether they realize it or not, are locked in constant conflict with the seafolk. This area in particular they’ve claimed as theirs, and that includes protecting the sea life from nets and pollution, from the noise and disruption of ships and those they carry. You may have guessed that your shipwreck was no accident, and I am here to tell you plainly: Seafolk kill all humans who enter these waters. They wreck your ships, dispose of the crew, and salvage the contents if they can possibly make any use of it. The sea provides them with all they truly need, but submersible human goods certainly enrich their economy.”

Jongdae hadn’t let himself contemplate the true cause of his shipwreck, but he has no reason to doubt Yixing’s words. Except— 

“But Min saved me.”

“And in doing so, broke many laws, some of which are punishable by death.”

Jongdae gapes at Min, who’s gently supporting Jongdae in the water as he always does, but this time his eyes are downcast, locked on the glittering surface of the sea instead of looking at Jongdae’s face, even when Jongdae calls his name.

“Your lover has killed hundreds of humans with his own hands, Jongdae. That is Min’s true nature, and his role in seafolk society. He is a wrecker, keeping his home and all its secrets safe.”

For a minute, Jongdae’s mouth opens and shuts in what’s probably a lovely impersonation of a codfish. “Min knows you’re telling me this?” That would explain the merman’s abashed demeanor. 

“More or less,” Yixing hedges. “He knows I’m charting out your choices. And he knows it’s your choice to make, without his input.”

“So you’re here to kill me?”

“I am here to do no such thing.”

Jongdae feels himself relax.

_ “He _ is here to kill you,” Yixing gestures at the third merman. “Heaven knows your Min has proved himself incapable.”

“But you said I had a choice,” Jongdae says, trying not to tighten his arm around Min’s gills.

“You do, but remaining on this island is not one of them.” Yixing makes a click-whine sound that Jongdae could only approximate by snapping his tongue and slurring  _ hhiun _ through his nose, and the third merman lifts his head in response.

“—Has promised to make it painless, mentally and physically, by mesmerizing you with a siren’s song before cleanly snapping your neck. Min will then return your body to your vessel, laying it to rest at the bottom of the sea with what remains of your former companions.”

“And my other option?” Jongdae asks through salt-cracked lips.

“Your other option is to turn your back on your own kind forever and become one with the sea.”

“But I’ll live? I mean, in a way a human would consider alive, not in some unconscious, siren-brainwashed sort of way?”

“Your mind will remain your own, though much of your physical self will be remodeled to be compatible with your permanent home.”

“And what about Min?” Jongdae asks. “Will my physical self be  _ compatible _ with him?”

Yixing smirks, a silvery sea devil beneath the moonlight. “Oh yes, the pair of you, while far from identical, will certainly be  _ compatible, _ in many senses of the word—though of course, as two males, you’ll never produce offspring together.”

Well, that answers one question, at least.

“Is there anything else you should be telling me?” Jongdae asks, unsure of how much to trust this person, considering old Click-hhiun over there is evidently capable of hypnotizing him into doing whatever they want, anyway.

“Those are the essentials,” Yixing says. “You have no choice about whether or not to enter the sea, but you get to decide whether or not you continue breathing—in one form or another.”

“So, be murdered, or live with a murderer,” Jongdae scoffs, though he can’t bring himself to pull away from Min’s hold. It’s familiar and grounding to have Min’s arm hovering behind him as usual, steadying him in the ever-present push and pull of the waves.

“Well, you don’t  _ have _ to live with a murderer if you truly see him that way. You can choose life in the sea and live with myself, for example. I take no part in any conflict, and I wouldn’t mind the company. Or go off by yourself, if you’d rather take your chances alone with the sea, it’s your life to waste. But if you try to contact humans ever again for any reason, you’ll die and so will Min whether he knows about it or not. So if that’s your plan, consider yourself warned.”

Jongdae narrows his eyes. “How do you know human language if seafolk kill every human they encounter?”

Yixing laughs. “We were all young once. But that is a story for another day. Tonight’s story hinges only on this—do you swallow this pearl, or will the sea swallow you?”

Min may as well be a statue beneath his arm. Click-hhiun is watching Yixing, and Yixing is watching Jongdae. The pearl gleams in Yixing’s palm, and to Jongdae, the choice is clear.

If he chooses death, that’s the end. If he chooses the pearl, death is always an option later. Jongdae is certain about absolutely nothing in this situation—he’s not even fully certain he’s not dreaming all of this right now. But leaving his options open seems like the way to go. He’s not agreeing to marry Min or whatever the mer equivalent is. He never has to see him again if he doesn’t want to. Still, Jongdae finds it difficult to let go of him and swim to Yixing, treading water for a moment and examining the merman’s face and posture, alert for any kind of treachery.

He ultimately decides that, if there were treachery on the table, it made no sense to straight up inform him they would kill him. Whatever happens with this pearl, if it ends up worse than death, he’ll let Click-hhiun do his thing.

Jongdae takes the pearl from Yixing’s hand. It’s intimidatingly large, nearly as big as a walnut still in the shell. But Yixing had said he was meant to swallow it, so Jongdae must assume it’s possible.

He pops it in his mouth and continues to tread water, sucking the smooth, tasteless surface in an effort to call forth enough saliva to get it down his throat.

Jongdae swallows, feeling like the bulge in his throat must be blocking his air. But it passes the prominence of his throat—and then Jongdae truly can’t breathe.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

Xiumin can’t resist diving for Chen when he panics and flails, losing buoyancy as the arms that were keeping him afloat now claw at his throat. He’s a little afraid Chen will push him away, that Chen will hate him now for imprisoning him, for killing other landlings, for forcing him to make this choice that’s not really any kind of choice at all. But Chen clings to him like a newborn, which Xiumin supposes isn’t too far from the truth.

Chen squeals, high and tight, trying to reach his fingers into his mouth or rip through his neck.

“Help me get his clothes off,” Xiumin begs, hating to see his beloved in such distress. 

He holds Chen’s hands still so he can’t hurt himself, crooning his name reassuringly, as Kk’hyun and Yixing undo the fastenings and slide the constricting fabric from Chen’s undulating body. They fall away just in time, Chen’s body spasming as if he’d grabbed hold of the wrong sort of eel. Gills rip open between his ribs, flaring wide and bloody before glowing a healthy red. They pump and flutter, and then Chen shrieks as his tentacles rend themselves in half, then in half again, now eight where there were once only two, writhing and flexible instead of firm and rigid. Xiumin holds him while he convulses, mindful of his new gills, flaring down his sides like Yixing’s instead of on his neck like his and Kk’hyun’s.

“Abyss, he’s loud,” Hyun mutters, but he squeezes Xiumin’s shoulder, hovering close even if there’s nothing further he can do to soothe either of them. Xiumin appreciates it anyway, that while Kk’hyun would have killed Chen, it would have been out of love for his friend, just as everything else they do for each other.

Xiumin owes Hyunnie so much for all of this. For pulling him out of the clam he’d placed the nidus inside without hurting the creature, enabling the perfect pearl to form. For finding a pair of long landling grippers at the market, letting Xiumin reclaim it after the full moon rose with no further risk to life or limb. And for taking him to Yixing in the first place, who, while perhaps turning Chen against Xiumin, had at least provided an alternative to death for them both.

It feels like forever, but the moon has barely moved by the time Chen slumps in Xiumin’s arms, body limp but breathing relaxing into steadiness.

For a moment, the excessive riffle of water through Chen’s gills is the only sound, the former landling still trying to inflate his entire chest rather than let the smaller, reflexive muscles of the gills do their thing automatically. He still struggles unless his shoulders are above the water, so that’s how Xiumin holds him even though his own gills are starting to burn as they dry out.

“Oh, for spawn’s sake,” Kk’hyun finally says, flicking his tail and sending a wave over them all.

Yixing turns and lifts a brow.

Kk’hyun sinks lower into the water. “Sorry,” he squeaks.

“Thanks,” Xiumin answers. Not only are his gills much more comfortable, but Chen had panicked when his face was submerged—only to relax when it made no difference to his ability to breathe.

He sputters out some landling words, now squeaky and distorted by his new form into something resembling Yixing’s accent, even in what was his native tongue.

Yixing chuckles, answering in the tongue-twisting landling speech. Jongdae darts him with repeated questions, Yixing calmly provides answers, and then Chen turns in Xiumin’s arms, looking him in the eye for the first time since Yixing had begun his explanation.

“Min,” he says, the syllable pronounced much closer to properly. “Shaan’kk eeeuuu. Ssaiff.”

“Safe,” Xiumin repeats, unable to hide his smile.

Chen nods, then leans in to press a kiss at the edge of his mouth, pulling away when Xiumin turns to deepen it.

“S’hoon,” Chen says, eyes looking even bigger without their former white rim.

Then he lets go of Xiumin, who reflexively tries to catch him until he realizes he’s thrashing the short distance to grab hold of Yixing’s offered arm.

“Don’t give us those seal eyes, XiuXiu,” Yixing chides. “I’m not stealing your man. Chen doesn’t know how to talk or swim or even which hole he shits from anymore. He’s asked me to help him adapt, since I once had to do the same myself.”

Xiumin nods. He could teach Chen words, but not necessarily how to make the right sounds. Yixing learned all their sounds really well, and the rest of their bodies are similar, too. Of course it would be easiest for Yixing to show him how it all works.

“And… he says he needs a little time, Xiu. He was very insistent that I make sure you know he doesn’t hate you, that he’s still very grateful you saved his life and he thinks you’re handsome and a bunch of other stuff that’s too cheesy to repeat. But he’s also a little shaken to not only give up the idea of ever returning to his own kind, but to accept the idea that they’re your enemies, and that seafolk society is unwavering about the only good landling being a dead one.”

“Oh,” Xiumin says, dropping his gaze from Chen’s new tentacles to his own tail fins. “Tell him… that of course I understand. But also that I’m not a wrecker anymore. I got Suho to reassign me to scavenging and reef management. So I won’t have any contact with landlings at all, much less kill any more of them.”

“I’ll be sure he knows,” Yixing promises, eyes kind.

Xiumin reflexively lifts his eyes when Chen speaks, even though he can’t understand and Chen isn’t even talking to him. But he does give Xiumin a tiny smile and a little wave before gripping Yixing’s shoulders, letting himself be towed off into the deep.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

It’s twenty-three tide-cycles before Chen sees Min again. And that’s what he calls out across the reef, despite the fact that he can now easily pronounce both syllables of his name.

His ocean-adapted eyes let him see the surprise flare on Min’s face as he lifts his head to see Chen hovering there, Yixing drifting off to one side.

“Chen?” Min asks, tail flicking slightly to push him closer, mesh bag floating forgotten to the seabed. “Can I—I mean. Am I allowed to talk to you? Can you even understand me?”

“If you use simple words,” Chen laughs. “And speak a little slower.”

“Sorry,” Min says, drifting a little closer, eyes roaming Chen’s figure in wonderment just as Chen had always stared at him. “Uh. You look well.”

“I’m adjusting,” Chen says, doing a little pirouette before flaring his tentacles wide, only having to paw the water with one webless hand to keep himself stable during his little stunt.

Min laughs, drifting a little closer still, close enough that Chen can show off another new trick. He snakes the nearest tentacle through the water, stretching it long and thin before attaching the suckers at the tip to the broad scales over what would be Min’s hip if he were human. Then he tugs.

Min shimmies, breaking the suction hold as he looks away from Chen to see what had snagged him. He laughs when he sees Chen’s tentacle stretch again to catch hold, allowing himself to be drawn through the water.

Chen wants to just wrap him up in all his tentacles and his arms, too, squeezing him tight to his chest. But he doesn’t, instead releasing his grip when Min’s still just out of arm’s reach. Min’s little smile melts away when Chen lets go, and while Chen’s still making peace with the idea of defecting from the human race, allowing them to risk slaughter without even trying to warn them, it had been far easier to make peace with Min’s role in it all.

Chen wouldn’t blame a lion for savaging a human who wandered into their territory, uncaring whether old or young, armed or not. The lion wouldn’t understand why the human had come, and especially if it had been hunted before, it would assume that its life or that of its cubs were in danger. And it might be—if the human successfully captured it or told other humans where it was, they could come with big, merciless guns and kill the lions or force them from their homes, consign captured lions to captivity and destroy the habitat the rest of them relied on.

He can’t blame the seafolk for defending themselves, even preemptively. Humans are guilty of many atrocities towards each other for the simple reason of differing skin color, religion, nationality, or other differences that are only a result of where someone happened to be born instead of any personal or moral failing. He doesn’t doubt that the seafolk, if discovered, would be abused and exploited at first, even if familiarity eventually led to respect.

But the ocean is vast, and the seafolk aren’t setting traps in the middle of shipping lanes. They’re defending their little corner of it, their Devil’s Triangle, a place rumored to be avoided at all costs. Wealthy and powerful men think they’ll be immune to the superstition of their men, or men already breaking rules, like his own crew, may have no qualms about breaking taboo as well. But if Chen knew that maneating lions inhabited a certain area, he’d still want to warn passersby to steer clear, whether they were good people or not. He suffers from knowledge of danger and the inability to share it, but that is a problem between Chen and his conscience, not Chen and Min. Especially since Yixing had told him that Min himself is no longer a part of that danger.

But he doesn’t want to make any assumptions, either. He doesn’t want Min’s obligation, to be taken care of because Min feels responsible for him. That’s the biggest reason he’d asked Yixing to shelter him—he doesn’t want to be Min’s burden. He wants to be Min’s choice.

“I missed you,” Chen says, having learned that phrase particularly to be ready for this moment, whenever it had happened to be.

“I missed you, too.” 

Min’s face might be carefully neutral, but his tail is all but quivering, rippling the water between them. There are few secrets beneath the sea for those able and willing to detect them, and Jongdae is learning more about his new capabilities every day. He’s already comfortable enough in his new skin to understand that Min’s awkwardness isn’t born from revulsion as he’d halfway feared, his new limbs seeming ungainly and perhaps even ugly compared to Min’s sleek, shining tail. Nor is it guilt, or at least, not guilt regarding his treatment of Chen.

“I don’t hold anything against you,” Chen tells him, smiling when Min’s eyes flick to his face. “You only did what you thought right, out of dedication rather than cruelty or enjoyment. Kk’hyun came to visit me, and told me how you were very methodical about everything, never toying with them or letting them suffer overlong if you could help it. And that you were the one who started getting them to release the livestock if possible.”

Min nods, gaze back on the coral below them, eyes following a pair of wrasse chasing each other in a mating display. Chen misses their own previous displays, but he doesn’t feel ready to turn his back on his old life and former species.

He does feel ready to be convinced, though.

“You could visit, too,” he invites, unsure at the sudden stillness in Min’s entire form. “Er. Only if you want. I understand if you don’t.”

This jolts Min back into animation. “Of course I want! Why would you think I wouldn’t?”

“Uh, because you’re way out of my league?”

Min tilts his head at the sudden stream of distorted human speech. Yixing laughs from where he’s unabashedly observing them with amusement.

“I told you—metaphors are a pain. Xiumin, Chen means to say that your major claw is much bigger than his.”

Min gapes. “It is not,” he skirls, then starts a very rapid, vehement stream of speech that has Chen blinking as Min gesticulates. Yixing is laughing uncontrollably behind him, but he makes an effort to recover when Min whirls, directing an exclamation in his direction.

“Okay, okay,” Yixing says. “Don’t get your undies in a bunch.”

It’s Chen’s turn to laugh when Min scrunches up his face at this new landling phrase.

“Basically,” Yixing says in sea-accented human, “he wants you to know that you’re incredibly attractive, even when you had ‘hard awkward land-tentacles,’ and you’re even more irresistible now that you can share an environment, speech, and activities the words for which I am  _ not _ ready to translate for you. He says it’s particularly charming how you change color with your emotions, so even though you may not know all the seafolk speech yet, he still feels like he understands you much better now, and then a bunch of gross nonsense about the versatility and potential of your tentacles, which made him very flustered so he saved himself by ending with how much he loves your smile, how he loves seeing it again, how he mostly wants you to be happy here and content with your new life, but he’d particularly like it if he could be part of that happiness.”

Yixing’s gills flare wide. “Man, I feel like I need insulin after all that sugar.”

But Chen can only blink at him, the warm water around him now feeling particularly cool against the heat of his face. He’d been so focused on getting his tentacles to just be basically  _ useful  _ to him that he hadn’t even thought about how much  _ fun _ they could potentially be. But now his mind is flooded with uninvited images that are going to make it that much more difficult to take it slow, to try to court Min properly instead of just drag him off into a kelp forest and make good his newfound knowledge of seafolk anatomy (thanks in no small part to Kk’hyun, a grease pencil, and a flat enamel serving tray, evidence of the creative use the seafolk make of their pillaging).

But he shoves all those thoughts to the back of his mind, the shock of one piece of information more electric than the rest.

“Wait,” Chen says. “Did you just say I  _ change color?” _

“Uh, yeah?”

“Why didn’t you tell me!”

“Because I assumed you  _ noticed?” _

“You told me from the beginning not to look at my tentacles! To just use them by feel instead of watching myself do shit!”

This cracks Yixing up again, leaving Chen exasperated and Min visibly confused. Chen tucks his chin to look at his tentacles, and sure enough, the usual muted red is now marred by bold slashes of black.

When he looks back up at Min, he’s smiling softly, chuckling at the way Chen’s stretching and coiling his tentacles, observing the pattern until it fades along with his annoyance.

“You didn’t know?”

“Look, I’ve just been trying to do things like swim in a straight line and adjust to the fact that not only am I now supposed to eat  _ all _ of a fish, I also delightfully shit ribbons. I’ve been a little busy to notice that I’m wearing my three hearts on my non-existent sleeves.”

Yixing had almost recovered before this pronouncement but it sets him off again, drifting upside down with all his tentacles coiled tight. His tentacles which are always solid black, and no clue at all to Chen that his own might decide to go razzle-dazzle on him at any given moment.

“Well. I only understood about half of that, but I think it’s really charming.” Min darts back over to where he’d dropped his sack, returning to Chen with drooping shoulders. “I’m supposed to be working right now, and I have to make sure this section’s litter-free before it gets too dark to see. But, um. I’d love to visit.”

“I’d like that, too.”

“And, er. Before I get back to work, could I—” The string of clicks that follows isn’t any word Chen has ever heard before.

“I don’t know what that is,” he admits.

Min’s hopeful face morphs into a smirk. “I’m glad to be the one to expand your vocabulary in this direction,” he murmurs, gliding towards Chen slowly enough that he has plenty of time to defend his personal space if he so chooses.

But Chen’s enhanced circulatory system thrums as Min nears, and he drops his gaze to his tentacles as Min’s lips brush softly against his cheek.

They’re suddenly covered in white polka-dots.

“May as well be goddamn hearts,” he huffs, a much less satisfying thing to do when it only entails pushing water through his gills forcefully enough to be audible.

Min giggles. “I like this pattern. I look forward to seeing it a lot.”

Chen pushes him away, proud of himself for remembering to flare his tentacles on the opposite side so Min moves much more than he does. “Get back to work, you grouper,” he grumbles, but can’t hold his smile when Min only laughs.

“If it’s a grouper you want, I can bring one by after I’m done here?”

“Please,” Chen nods. “Yixing really likes crab, and I know I have super strong teeth now and everything but they’re still a little too  _ crunchy _ for me.” And they make his ribbon-shit a disturbingly-bloody shade of red, but he’s not going to share that detail with the guy he’s trying to court.

Min smiles like Chen just handed him a thousand strands of shells. “I’ll bring you a nice, tender one,” he promises, then flits in to peck his cheek again before darting back to work.

“Just move in together already,” Yixing calls, inspiring a gesture from Min that Jongdae has never seen before and yet immediately knows is entirely rude.

“We can’t move in until we court properly—what kind of mollusk do you think I am?” Chen asks, jetting over to nudge his shoulder into Yixing’s. “And I can’t court him properly until you teach me all those gross mushy words.”

Yixing groans. “This is what I get for helping people,” he says. “Damn XiuXiuminnie and his seal eyes. I should have shut my door in his pretty little face.”

“You don’t have a door,” Jongdae points out. “It’s kinda hard to shut a bunch of beaded curtains in someone’s face.”

“Cat needs to be able to get in and out,” Yixing defends. “Do you know how hard it was to housebreak him?”

“Cat’s housebroken?”

“Yes. Shut up. He just has accidents sometimes, it’s not his fault. Or mine. We don’t deserve your judgement—one more reason I should have shut my beads in Xiu’s pretty little face.”

“I doubt it would have worked, door or not. Min’s pretty persistent.”

“And aren’t you the lucky one for that?”

Chen smiles, unsurprised to look down and see the white polka-dots again. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I am one lucky little landling.”

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ

Xiumin can feel the disturbance in the water, of course—his Chennie hasn’t quite learned yet to move  _ with _ the water for stealth rather than  _ through _ it. But Xiumin pretends ignorance, merely smiling down at the trinket he’s cleaning rather than turning around. Having Chen assist with scavenging has dramatically increased his finds, but Chen tends to get a little impatient for Xiumin to finish sorting and cleaning their share of the take.

Sure enough, a thin-stretched tentacle loops around his waist.

He drops the bauble onto the worktable as he’s tugged through the water, more white-spotted tentacles joining the first in wrapping him up and bringing him into the arms of his predator.

“Hi,” Xiumin greets Chen’s grin with a fond eye roll.

“Hi.” Chen is unabashed, holding him tightly with arms and tentacles, keeping him close, kissing him deeply. “I adore you.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“You love me, too.”

“I can’t deny it.”

“And it’s late.”

“Is it?”

“It is. So you should come to bed.”

“I should?”

“You should. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Xiumin snorts at Chen’s suggestively bouncing brows. “You always do.”

He lets Chen pull him through the tunnels, one pair of his tentacles gripping the walls to tug them along. Xiumin flicks his tail a bit as they cross the main chamber, walls too far apart to give Chen much purchase unless he hugs the perimeter of the room, and the few tentacles not wrapped around Xiumin inadequate to provide much propulsion. Those tentacles take over again when they reach the mouth of the tunnel leading to their personal quarters, moving purely by feel, kissing Xiumin ardently the entire time. Xiumin’s so distracted he couldn’t say when they arrived or how long he’s been lying in their bed with Chen wrapped around him.

He knows the exact moment a tentacle starts caressing his slit, though. Chen has learned Xiumin’s body well enough to find the column of overlapping scales by feel, teasing them gently apart, squeezing Xiumin’s body to coax his papilla to emerge, something that rarely happens for seafolk without breeding pheromones of some type in the water around them. Their own spawning season is in early summer, but the ocean is awash with life. It’s easy enough for the adventurous to find some other creature’s spawning grounds and play the remora, letting pheromones—from fish, coral, or whatever else—activate their own drive as well.

But even though Xiumin had explained this to Chen early on, as soon as they shared enough words to do so, Chen was a persistent little tease. So one day Xiumin had just shrugged and gestured to his body, inviting Chen to do his best in order to prove that it wasn’t Xiumin’s lack of desire, just a lack of signals in the water, signals that the former landling’s body didn’t produce in a form that Xiumin’s system recognized.

It turns out that patience is the key, and Chen, if he has a specific goal, can be very, very patient. The hard part is getting the head of the papilla exposed, something Xiumin can sometimes help with, flexing his body to nudge the organ forward. But once Chen gets his suckers on the sensitive tip, it’s a predictable, if not exactly rapid, procedure from there.

Xiumin doesn’t mind the time it takes. He’d loved sharing kisses with Chen even before the pearl, had relished the time they spent, close and cozy, basking in each other’s affection. So he just relaxes until Chen’s clever little tentacles have convinced his body to comply, until he feels stray currents of seawater somewhere deeply sensitive. Then he bows his entire body, flexing hard against the questing tentacles, purposefully squeezing the same muscles that pulse involuntarily as he climaxes. He only manages to push his papilla forward slightly, but that’s all that Chen needs.

Xiumin shudders and Chen smiles against his gills, having quickly discovered that while Chen’s own are merely ticklish, Xiumin’s are just plain sensitive. And as long as he plays with them one at a time, Xiumin can breathe just fine—well, at least any struggles aren’t brought on by physical obstruction. But this particular shudder was a reaction to a brief but intense caress rather lower down, and Chen knows he’s triumphed.

Every tiny caress stimulates further emergence, allowing stronger, longer sensations to increase the rate of arousal. It’s sweet agony compared to letting the pheromones do the job, everything sharply too much and frustratingly not enough until Xiumin’s papilla has emerged fully, allowing Chen to grapple him completely and take the sensitive length inside himself. As always, Xiumin squeals in sweet relief as he’s engulfed, and as always, Chen chuckles in triumph, the smug little clicks still carrying the same cadence they had before he’d swallowed the pearl. And then before Xiumin can recover, Chen works his hectocotylus—the sensitive, arousal-enlarged tip of one of those amazing tentacles—into Xiumin’s vent.

He’d feel bad for climaxing so quickly under such sensation, but Chen always tells him that since his arousal comes more easily, he’s all but desperate by the time he gets Xiumin’s body to cooperate with their desires. So Xiumin just lets himself fizz into seafoam, shuddering and twitching in Chen’s encircling tentacles, in the sturdy strength of his arms, able to truly let go and enjoy without fear of predation or exposure, safe in their room, where the only thing that matters is how good they make each other feel. He wraps his pleasure-weakened arms around Chen as he convulses in turn, squealing long and low against Xiumin’s shoulder.

Xiumin’s far from inexperienced, but every time with Chen feels like the first, the dual sensations of being inside Chen and having Chen inside him always so overwhelming. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt, which is true of most of their relationship. It’s not just the undulating movements around his length that have him snared, the throbbing inside him, the soft little tugs of suckers against skin and scales, the way Chen keeps breaking their kiss periodically to huff against Xiumin’s mouth, like he’s momentarily forgotten the gills fluttering between his ribs are what’s giving him breath.

It’s also the way Xiumin’s heart flutters against his own ribs whenever he looks at the one he loves, smiling, laughing, just as brilliant in the soft light of the glowing corals around them now as he is in the sunlight filtering through shallow water to lick along his golden skin, to glint from the abyssal hair teased by the gentle current. Chen’s more graceful every day, adapting to his new body as if he’d been born to it, but even when Xiumin would sneak peaks at his progress when he’d first lived with Yixing, when he’d been forever flailing, tentacles clumped into two groups of four, churning the water as if he still only had the two lower limbs he’d had on land, Xiumin had found him enchanting.

He’d been enchanting even with his landling limbs, had lured Xiumin in with his song as sure as if he were the siren and Xiumin the helpless prey. And Xiumin still loves his song, deeper than most seafolk, sending melodic thrums through both their chests as Chen holds him tight with multiple limbs.

It’s not in seafolk nature to hold tight to each other outside of childhood, youngsters clinging to parents to avoid being separated by a current too strong for their undeveloped tails to mitigate. Aside from that, being entangled is a sign of danger, of entrapment, of impending doom, and therefore most affectionate interactions between seafolk involve sliding caresses, the slip of tail against tail, hands stroking over hair. But landlings are always clinging, unstable in the water without something solid to anchor them, and Xiumin suspects his Chennie will always be this way.

But that suits Xiumin just fine, because every time he’s close to Chen, he feels in constant danger of being entirely swept away.

# ꉹꉹꉹꉹꉹ


End file.
